Tag Archives: united

Against the Odds, Members of a Refugee Caravan Are Let Into the US

by NumbersSanborn Posted on May 12, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last weekend, dozens of refugees who participated in a caravan that traversed Mexico to seek asylum in the United States, presented themselves at the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana and were admitted into the United States. Planned by a coalition of Mexican and American organizers, the caravan began in early April at the Guatemala-Mexico border. Its goal was to raise awareness of the dangers migrants face while traveling through Mexico as well as the reportedly widespread practice of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents illegally turning back refugees at the border. The group reached Tijuana last weekend after suffering a variety of threats and setbacks during nearly four weeks on the road.

In total, 78 asylum seekers were admitted during the weekend border crossing. The group included men, women, and children, most of whom were fleeing violence in Central America. Alex Mensing, one of the caravan organizers and a paralegal at the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Law Clinic, says that several families were released on parole to family members and sponsors in the country, while the rest have been sent to immigration detention centers or are in the custody to of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Only one asylum seeker was turned away at the border, Mensing says. A child with US citizenship crossing with his Guatemalan father was sent back to Mexico when border patrol learned his mother was still there. “Once they found out the mother was in Tijuana, they called her and told her that if she didn’t come get her son, they would take the child away and put him in foster care.” (Under international law, separating children from their parents usually should be avoided, according to the detention guidelines outlined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.) There were also allegations of refugees receiving poor treatment in CBP custody. Los Angeles resident Dolores Ramirez, who had relatives traveling in the caravan, told the local news outlet KPBS that her relatives were “only getting 10 minutes to eat, they have no blankets, they’re sleeping on the floor in cells, they’re being yelled at… They shouldn’t be treated like animals, they’re not animals, they didn’t cross the border illegally, they’re seeking help.”

Cristobal Sanchez

Not all of the refugees who turned themselves in last weekend had traveled with the caravan. Several, having already been turned back by CBP multiple times, waited in Tijuana to cross with the group.

According to multiple human rights attorneys and a new report from Human Rights First, CBP has been turning away more asylum seekers since the election of President Donald Trump. “In the wake of the election and President Trump’s January executive orders relating to refugees, CPB agents have in some cases claimed the United States is no longer accepting asylum seekers,” Human Rights First reports. By blocking refugees, CBP may be putting them in direct danger. The report adds, “Cartels, smugglers, and traffickers—who control areas around border crossings and wait outside some ports of entry where they see migrants and asylum seekers as easy prey—have kidnapped, raped, and robbed asylum seekers wrongly turned away by the U.S. government.”

B. Shaw Drake, a fellow at Human Rights First and one of the authors of the report, has heard reports that CBP officers turned away two Eritrean refugees on the day after the caravan members turned themselves in. “We had hoped our report and all the media attention would have put them on notice,” Drake says. “But we continue to hear about those cases happening.”

Mensing says that while the caravan was by and large a success, he has concerns that the practice of turning back asylum seekers will continue unchanged. “There’s no doubt in mind that of those 78 people, most if not all of them would have had difficulty being processed if it had not been for the caravan. And clearly, if they were back to rejecting people on Monday, it was not a lasting thing, either.”

Continued here: 

Against the Odds, Members of a Refugee Caravan Are Let Into the US

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Against the Odds, Members of a Refugee Caravan Are Let Into the US

Black Lives Matter is Bailing Out Women for Mother’s Day

by KristinRJA Posted on May 12, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Black Lives Matter has a big gift for some moms this Mother’s Day—their freedom. Groups affiliated with the police and criminal justice reform movement have been bailing black women out of jail ahead of the holiday on Sunday. The nationwide effort, dubbed National Black Mamas Bail Out Day, seeks to reunite the women with their families and raise awareness of the disparate impact of incarceration and the bail system on black women.

So far, more than 50 women around the country have been bailed out by the Mother’s Day effort. Organizing groups in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Oakland, and 13 other cities, have been raising money through an online fundraising campaign. So far, they have brought in nearly $500,000 for the campaign, with $25,000 set aside for use in each city. The average bail paid off has varied widely; organizers in Atlanta bailed out 19 women with their pot of money, whereas 4 women have been bailed out in Oakland.

Activists have also raised money individually as well. Members of the Atlanta chapter of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), an LGBT-focused racial justice group, canvassed neighborhoods and collected small donations in a hat, according to Mary Hooks, an organizer with the chapter who came up with the idea for the nationwide initiative. “Black people have a tradition of using our collective resources to buy each other’s freedom,” she says, referring to the slavery-era practice of free black people saving money to purchase the freedom of their enslaved family members and friends. “We have an opportunity to do that when we understand how the cash bail system works. The sooner we can get folks out, the ability for them to mitigate their cases increases and the less collateral damage they are likely to incur.”

The organizers have drawn on their existing relationships with other criminal justice organizations to identify women to bail out of jail. In Oakland, the public defender’s office sent organizers names of women in jail, says Gina Clayton, an organizer with Essie Justice Group. Essie Justice organizers also sat in on arraignment hearings to identify women who would need to be bailed out. One of the people bailed out in Oakland was a mother of two who was jailed on a $10,000 bail about a week earlier, Clayton says. When organizers visited the woman to tell her they were paying her bail, she cried. Organizers with the Oakland office of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, an immigrants’ rights group that focuses on black migrants, bailed out a Haitian woman who had been held in a detention facility in Southern California. The woman had fled domestic abuse in her home country, according to Devonte Jackson, an organizer with the group. BAJI bought the woman a bus ticket to Florida so she could visit her family for Mother’s Day.

The term “mama,” as it’s used by the National Black Mamas Bail Out Day campaign, is broadly defined to include not just women with biological children, but all women—including trans women—who are linchpins for their families and neighborhoods. “It’s about knowing and naming that black women play such a critical role in our communities,” Hooks says.

The number of women behind bars in the United States has increased 700 percent since 1980, according to the Sentencing Project. More than 100,000 women are currently in jail. Many have not been convicted of anything but are unable to make bail, and a disproportionate number of them are black. Eighty percent of incarcerated women are mothers, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

Nationally, the median bail set for a felony charge is $10,000, almost a year’s income for the average person unable to meet bail, according to the Sentencing Policy Initiative. Nearly 90 percent of inmates awaiting trial can’t afford bail; The average bail amount in felony cases has nearly tripled since 1990.

Bail reform is a key part of the national policy platform released last summer by the Movement for Black Lives, a broad coalition of groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the groups bailing out women this week are also working on efforts to pass local and state legislation that would abolish cash bail in their jurisdictions. Earlier this year, New Orleans and New Jersey eliminated cash bail requirements for a range of low level offenses.

This weekend, organizers in some cities are holding events to welcome newly freed women back home. In Atlanta, organizers are hosting a picnic for the women and their families on Mother’s Day. Volunteers will help connect the women with resources for housing, employment, and legal assistance, Hooks says. The groups are also raising money for a possible bail-out effort to commemorate Father’s Day on June 18.

Continued here:

Black Lives Matter is Bailing Out Women for Mother’s Day

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Black Lives Matter is Bailing Out Women for Mother’s Day

Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

by JosieWilbur Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

There are multiple investigations of the Trump-Russia scandal underway, including two conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, one by a Senate judiciary subcommittee, and one (or more) by the FBI. They cover a range of issues: Vladimir Putin’s secret operation to subvert the 2016 campaign to help Donald Trump win, interactions between Trump associates and Russia, ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador (and how the White House handled that controversy, as well as Flynn’s acceptance of foreign payments from Russia and other nations and his other business dealings), and, possibly, the business- and lobbying-related actions of Paul Manafort, who managed Trump’s campaign, and other people close to Trump. Now there is a need for a new investigation that focuses on Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey.

This could well be the most serious inquiry of all because it would raise the sensitive issue of impeachment.

When Trump pink-slipped Comey on Tuesday, his Justice Department released a three-page letter with reasons why Comey should be booted. The justifications were all related to how he managed the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails at the State Department. The criticisms were familiar and old: Comey had gone too far when he first held a press conference in July to declare the investigation was over but harshly criticized Clinton and then informed Congress days before the election that his agents had revived the investigation to review a newly found cache of Clinton emails (which turned out to hold essentially no new information). Of course, Trump enthusiastically praised Comey for his October surprise, because it dealt Clinton a blow in the final days and conceivably helped Trump win. But now, suddenly, Comey’s conduct in that episode is supposedly the grounds for Trump showing Comey the door.

The initial news reports tell another story. Various insider accounts—yes, based on anonymous sources—indicate that Trump’s firing of Comey was motivated, at least in part, by Trump’s anger over the ongoing Russia investigation. Politico reports:

Trump had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

And who was the best target for his anger? Comey.

Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.

Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.

If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment. In fact, the first of the three articles of impeachment filed by the House judiciary committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 was for obstruction of justice. That article listed as one reason for impeachment: “interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees.”

Trump certainly appears to have tried to interfere with the Russia investigation by dismissing Comey.

A congressional investigation of Trump’s action is warranted. There are White House and Justice Department officials who can be questioned on this subject. They can be asked how the firing was discussed and handled by administration officials. (Congress might also want to ask Comey about the President’s claim, in his termination letter to the FBI director, that Comey had assured Trump on three occasions that he was not a target of the bureau’s investigation.) There may be documents to subpoena. (One side issue: how could Attorney General Jeff Sessions participate in this decision, as he did, if he recused himself from anything to do with the Russia investigations because he had lied about his own meetings with the Russian ambassador?)

This is not simply a personnel matter. Trump does have the right to fire Comey. But if this was done to smother an investigation, Trump may have violated the law, defending himself and not the Constitution. He knows why he did this—and presumably so do Sessions and assorted White House and Justice Department officials. Congress needs to step in and guarantee for the American public that the president has not abused his power and obstructed justice to protect himself. And there are several committees in the House and Senate that could assume this critical mission. With Trump’s firing of Comey, the Trump-Russia scandal has moved from a tale of a foreign power undermining American democracy to the story of a president possibly doing the same.

View this article: 

Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

Posted in alo, Casio, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

People Who Were “Fat Shamed” as Kids Are More Likely to Be Obese as Adults

by ChanelChavarria Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

Despite recent pushback, fat shaming—making people feel bad about their weight—remains a robust pastime among Americans. Indeed, a notorious practitioner recently became president of the United States. New research suggests that all the teasing and tsk-tsking in service of the thin body ideal may have the opposite effect—it can lock people into a spiral of poor body image and eating disorders.

The latest: A study from University of Connecticut, University of Minnesota, and Harvard researchers, based on a 15-year project tracking a group of students in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area from their mid-teenage years to their early 30s, analyzes the “behavioral, psychological, and socioenvironmental factors related to dietary intake and weight-related outcomes in adolescents.”

Back in 1999, the project enrolled what the researchers call an ethnically and economically diverse group of 4,746 adolescents, assessing their body weight and surveying them about their experiences with weight-related teasing, from both school peers and family members. Perhaps not surprisingly, girls reported being the target of teasing at a slightly higher rate than boys—45.1 percent versus 37.1 percent. Girls reported being teased at home at a much higher clip—29.4 percent of girls said they were teased by a family member, compared with just 13.5 percent of boys. As for teasing from school peers, 30.2 percent of girls and 23 percent of boys reported it.

In 2015, the project managed to get 1,830 of the original participants, by then most of them around age 30, to take a detailed survey. It polled them regarding their body weight and height—to determine their body-mass index, a rough way to gauge obesity rates. Other topics included their propensity for binge eating, embarking on weight-loss diets, as well as “unhealthy” weight-loss methods (like fasting and diet pills), and their attitudes about their bodies.

The researchers adjusted the results (summarized here) to account for potentially confounding factors like their body-mass index back in 1999. While studies that rely on self-reported data always have to be eyed skeptically, this one paints a sad picture: Both women and men who were fat-shamed as adolescents were almost twice as likely to be obese as adults than people who weren’t teased. They were also likely to eat in response to emotional stress and report negative body self-image. Two other apparent legacies of adolescent teasing showed up in women but not men: a higher tendency to have dieted in the past year, and to have engaged in “unhealthy weight control efforts,” like fasting and taking diet pills.

Interestingly, just as girls in the original group reported much more teasing at home than boys did, the impact of fat shaming from family members seemed to hit them harder. Boys who were teased at home but not by peers carried no negative effects into adulthood, but for girls, having been teased at home was strongly associated with bad outcomes as adults, including negative body image.

The new paper echoes a similar 2016 study by German researchers, and comes on the heels of a 2016 study by UCLA researchers finding an association between weight stigmatization in middle school and higher rates of body dissatisfaction, social anxiety, and loneliness in junior high, and a 2013 one finding that two-thirds of teenagers enrolled in a pair of national weight loss camps had been harassed about their weight at school—including, quite often, by teachers and sports coaches.

The message here seems clear: Fat-shaming kids—at home and in the schoolyard—is toxic.

Original article:

People Who Were “Fat Shamed” as Kids Are More Likely to Be Obese as Adults

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on People Who Were “Fat Shamed” as Kids Are More Likely to Be Obese as Adults

Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

by TabathaRing Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The much-anticipated Senate hearing on Monday afternoon with former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper confirmed an important point: the Russia story still poses tremendous trouble for President Donald Trump and his crew.

Yates recounted a disturbing tale. She recalled that on January 26, she requested and received a meeting with Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel. At the time, Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials were saying that ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, had not spoken the month before with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about the sanctions then-President Barack Obama had imposed on the Russians as punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yates’ Justice Department had evidence—presumably intercepts of Flynn’s communications with Kislyak—that showed this assertion was flat-out false.

At that meeting, Yates shared two pressing concerns with McGahn: that Flynn had lied to the vice president and that Flynn could now be blackmailed by the Russians because they knew he had lied about his conversations with Kislyak. As Yates told the members of the Senate subcommittee on crime and terrorism, “To state the obvious: you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians.” She and McGahn also discussed whether Flynn had violated any laws.

The next day, McGahn asked Yates to return to the White House, and they had another discussion. According to Yates, McGahn asked whether it would interfere with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Flynn if the White House took action regarding this matter. No, Yates said she told him. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn. And Yates explained to the senators that she had assumed that the White House would not sit on the information she presented McGahn and do nothing.

But that’s what the White House did. McGahn in that second meeting did ask if the White House could review the evidence the Justice Department had. She agreed to make it available. (Yates testified that she did not know whether this material was ever reviewed by the White House. She was fired at that point because she would not support Trump’s Muslim travel ban.) Whether McGahn examined that evidence about Flynn, the White House did not take action against him. It stood by Flynn. He remained in the job, hiring staff for the National Security Council and participating in key policy decision-making.

On February 9, the Washington Post revealed that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had “full confidence” in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump declared, “Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.” Trump displayed no concern about Flynn’s misconduct.

The conclusion from Yates’ testimony was clear: Trump didn’t dump Flynn until the Kislyak matter became a public scandal and embarrassment. The Justice Department warning—hey, your national security adviser could be compromised by the foreign government that just intervened in the American presidential campaign—appeared to have had no impact on Trump’s actions regarding Flynn. Imagine what Republicans would say if a President Hillary Clinton retained as national security adviser a person who could be blackmailed by Moscow.

The subcommittee’s hearing was also inconvenient for Trump and his supporters on another key topic: it destroyed one of their favorite talking points.

On March 5, Clapper was interviewed by NBC News’ Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and asked if there was any evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. “Not to my knowledge,” Clapper replied. Since then, Trump and his champions have cited Clapper to say there is no there there with the Russia story. Trump on March 20 tweeted, “James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. The story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!” White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly deployed this Clapper statement to insist there was no collusion.

At Monday’s hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI’s investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.

Clapper also dropped another piece of information disquieting for the Trump camp. Last month, the Guardian reported that British intelligence in late 2015 collected intelligence on suspicious interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents and passed this information to to the United States “as part of a routine exchange of information.” Asked about this report, Clapper said it was “accurate.” He added, “The specifics are quite sensitive.” This may well have been the first public confirmation from an intelligence community leader that US intelligence agencies have possessed secret information about ties between Trump’s circle and Moscow. (Comey testified that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of links between Trump associates and Russian began in late July 2016.)

So this hearing indicated that the Trump White House protected a national security adviser who lied and who could be compromised by Moscow, that Trump can no longer cite Clapper to claim there was no collusion, and that US intelligence had sensitive information on interactions between Trump associates and possible Russian agents as early as late 2015. Still, most of the Republicans on the panel focused on leaks and “unmasking”—not the main issues at hand. They collectively pounded more on Yates for her action regarding the Muslim travel ban than on Moscow for its covert operation to subvert the 2016 election to help Trump.

This Senate subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is not mounting a full investigation comparable to the inquiry being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee (and presumably the hobbled House intelligence committee). It has far less staff, and its jurisdiction is limited. But this hearing demonstrated that serious inquiry can expand the public knowledge of the Trump-Russia scandal—and that there remains much more to examine and unearth.

Read article here:

Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

Jesmyn Ward’s Resistance Reading

by LCBPhillis Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

We asked a range of authors and creative types to suggest books that bring solace and/or understanding in this age of rancor. More than two dozen responded. Jesmyn Ward—an associate professor of English at Tulane University whose novel Salvage the Bones landed her a 2011 National Book Award—has a highly anticipated new novel due out in September. The book, intriguingly titled Sing, Unburied, Sing, is set in her native Mississippi. She wants you to read it, of course. And she also wants you to read the following.

Latest book: The Fire This Time (editor)
Also known for: Men We Reaped
Reading recommendations: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism: Author Edward E. Baptist builds a very compelling argument that slavery made the foundation and growth of the United States, as an independent country, possible. This book is so necessary because it seems we live in a time where those in power are invested in willful ignorance, “alternative facts,” and a revisionist view of the kind of real pain, suffering, and dehumanization that actually allowed this country to ascend to “greatness.” We need books like this to shine light on the darkness that beats at the heart of America today.

Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future, by David Grinspoon: Contrary to what our dear leader believes, climate change is not a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. It is real. This book provides a sobering exploration of how human beings have affected the climate of our planet, but also gives us reason to hope in the end. We need that now.
______________
The series so far: Daniel Alarcón, Kwame Alexander, Margaret Atwood, W. Kamau Bell, Ana Castillo, Jeff Chang, T Cooper, Michael Eric Dyson, Dave Eggers, Reza Farazmand, William Gibson, Piper Kerman, Phil Klay, Alex Kotlowitz, Bill McKibben, Rabbi Jack Moline, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Peggy Orenstein, Wendy C. Ortiz, Darryl Pinckney, Joe Romm, Karen Russell, George Saunders, Tracy K. Smith, Ayelet Waldman, Jesmyn Ward, and Gene Luen Yang. (New posts daily.)

Visit source:

Jesmyn Ward’s Resistance Reading

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jesmyn Ward’s Resistance Reading

There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

by MittieBennetts Posted on May 5, 2017

Kait Parker grew up the daughter of a math teacher and a storm-spotting firefighter, which likely explains her spitfire approach to explaining atmospheric science. Last year, when Breitbart attempted to disprove climate change by misleadingly poaching only a portion of her Weather Channel segment on La Niña, Parker fired back. She called out the alt-right site for its dubious methods in an online video. “Next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first,” she zinged. The response brought a wave of social-media support and shout-outs from mainstream media like Elle.

Parker is currently doubling down on reaching her fellow millennials, producing and hosting shows on digital-only outlets like the Weather Channel app and Snapchat. Her YouTube series, “Science Is Real,” examines the consequences of a warming planet. And later this spring she’ll launch “The United States of Climate Change,” a massive 50-part series that will chart climate impacts in every state through short videos, written pieces, and even graphic novels.

“If 97 doctors told you you were dying of cancer, would you believe them, or the three that didn’t?” she says of climate change. “The more lives I can help save and communicate the risk, the better.”

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Read article here:  

There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Green Light, LAI, ONA, OXO, Ringer, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

More Americans Are Spending Life in Prison Than Ever Before

by DarbyWillason Posted on May 3, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

One out of every nine prisoners in the United States is currently serving a life sentence—a record high—even as the overall prison population has fallen. That’s according to a depressing new report by the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group that’s been tracking life sentences since 2004. Almost 162,000 people are now serving life behind bars, up from 132,000 about a decade ago and 34,000 in 1984.

To put that in perspective, for every 100,000 people in America, 50 have been locked up for life. That’s roughly the total incarceration rate—including inmates whose sentences are just a few months—in Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. And it doesn’t even account for the tens of thousands of Americans handed sentences of 50 years or more, which are considered “de facto life sentences,” says Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project who co-authored the report.

What’s driving the uptick? It’s not a rise in violent crime or murder—both have dropped substantially since the mid-1990s. Nor is it an increase in the number of criminals behind bars: A majority of states saw declining overall prison populations from 2010 to 2015.

The Sentencing Project

The Sentencing Project

In part, the continuing rise in lifers is a legacy of three-strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentencing. It may also be related to the shift away from capital punishment. In some states that no longer allow executions, elected officials like governors and prosecutors have championed life-without-parole sentences—which account for the biggest increase in life sentences nationally—as a way to appear tougher on crime. “Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience,” Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, said in 2012 when his state abolished the death penalty. But these lengthy punishments probably aren’t keeping the public safer. “The impulse to engage in crime, including violent crime, is highly correlated with age,” the Sentencing Project notes. “Most criminal offending declines substantially beginning in the mid-20s and has tapered off substantially by one’s late 30s.”

The biggest losers of all this? Minorities. Of all the lifers and de facto lifers in the country, almost half are African American. What’s more, 12,000 of the total are locked up for crimes they committed as kids, though some are eligible for release thanks to recent court decisions. (In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for juveniles who didn’t commit homicide. In 2012, the justices went further, saying that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for kids, including those who committed homicide, are also unconstitutional. Nineteen states and DC now ban any kind of life-without-parole sentence for juveniles.)

Finally, it’s important to remember that many of the prisoners serving these long sentences never actually hurt anyone: Two-thirds of lifers or de facto lifers in the federal system committed nonviolent crimes—and one-third of them are serving time for drug crimes. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the helm of the Justice Department alongside his team of tough-on-crime advisers, there’s a good chance that won’t be changing anytime soon.

View this article:  

More Americans Are Spending Life in Prison Than Ever Before

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Safer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on More Americans Are Spending Life in Prison Than Ever Before

Trump Just Picked a Contraception Skeptic to Head Federal Family Planning Efforts

by BerniceD49 Posted on May 1, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

After appointing the former president of a powerful anti-abortion group to head public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration plans to bring another anti-abortion advocate into the ranks at HHS—this time to oversee the Title X program, which allocates nearly $300 million per year in family planning funds to providers across the country and shapes policy and regulation about topics like contraception and teen pregnancy.

Politico reported on Monday that the administration has tapped Teresa Manning, a law professor and former employee of two anti-abortion groups, to be the deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Population Affairs, the department within HHS that oversees Title X. Manning is currently listed in the HHS employee directory, although the White House did not confirm the appointment to Politico. Manning, an adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, was formerly a legislative analyst at the conservative Family Research Council and a lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee, the largest US organization opposing abortion.

Manning has questioned the efficacy of contraception in preventing pregnancy, and also said the government shouldn’t play a role in family planning—the foundational ideas behind the federal family planning program she will now be tasked with overseeing. In a 2003 radio interview, Manning noted that pro-choice advocates “promote contraception and birth control as a way to reduce the incidence of abortion. There really is no evidence to support that. In fact, the incidence of contraception use and the incidence of abortion go up hand in hand.” She also said that pro-choice advocates view abortion as a backup form of contraception for when birth control fails (oral contraception is effective over 99 percent of the time when taken properly): “Of course, contraception doesn’t work. Its efficacy is very low especially when you consider over years,” she said. Manning continued: “The prospect that contraception would always prevent the conception of a child is preposterous.”

Manning (who at the time had the last name Wagner) was quoted in a 2001 press release opposing the distribution of the morning-after pill over the counter, claiming the pills are abortifacients that “destroy the human life already conceived.” (Medical consensus disagrees, as the pills only prevent fertilization.) Manning also authored a 1999 article for the Family Research Council titled “The Empty Promise of Contraception.” The head of Trump’s HHS, former Georgia congressman Tom Price, also has a long history of opposing contraceptive access, including Obamacare’s mandate that health insurance cover birth control costs.

“I always shake my head. You know, family planning is what occurs between a husband and a wife and God,” Manning said during a 2003 panel about a book she edited. “And it doesn’t really involve the federal government, much less the United Nations, where we hear about family planning all the time. What are they doing in that business?”

In her new job at HHS, Manning will oversee a program that provides funding for contraception, STI testing, and other reproductive medical care for low-income and uninsured men and women across the country. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which provides research on reproductive health care, in 2015 Title X-funded clinics helped women avoid 822,300 unintended pregnancies.

“It is a cruel irony to appoint an opponent of birth control to oversee the nation’s only federal program dedicated to family planning,” said Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in an emailed statement. “We are at the lowest rate of unintended pregnancy in 30 years and a historic low for teen pregnancy because of access to birth control. Someone who promotes myths about birth control and reproductive care should not be in charge of the office that is responsible for family planning at HHS.”

By law, Title X cannot fund abortion services, but the program has been swept up in the new administration’s efforts to signal a hard anti-abortion stance. Trump signed a law last month that would allow states to withhold Title X funds from reproductive health care providers who also offer abortions.

View original article: 

Trump Just Picked a Contraception Skeptic to Head Federal Family Planning Efforts

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Just Picked a Contraception Skeptic to Head Federal Family Planning Efforts

Revisiting the Rodney King Verdict 25 Years Later

by FlorineJxn Posted on April 29, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles was engulfed in flames after a jury acquitted four LAPD officers who had been charged in the beating of Rodney King, an African-American motorist. Videos and images of King’s brutalization were widely circulated, provoking an immediate call for justice. When that call went unheeded, the ensuing unrest ignited a wave of violence, death, and financial loss in America’s second-largest city. Fifty-four people were killed in the riots, nearly 12,000 were arrested, and the city incurred more than $1 billion in damages. (The following year, two of the officers were convicted in federal court of violating King’s civil rights; the other two were acquitted once again.)

The parallels between modern-day police brutality and the 1991 King beating serve as a grim reminder of how little has changed today, despite efforts to reform law enforcement. Here are four documentaries and television specials that offer a window into the enduring legacy of the King verdict:

  1. LA Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later
    Despite being a retrospective, A&E’s special does not allow readers to retreat from the present-day, unfurling images of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin at the start of the two-hour film. LA Burning spins through first-person recollections from a week of dark, incendiary nights in Los Angeles. The grievances and discontent of rioters are visible onscreen, and notable interviewees include George Holliday, the photographer whose video of King’s beating went viral in the pre-Internet age. The special is available to stream on A&E’s website.
  2. LA 92
    At a midnight speech in Sacramento, California Gov. Pete Wilson (R) declares a state of emergency in LA: “This is a matter that needs to be settled in the courts and not in the streets,” he tells residents. Using archival footage, LA 92 is National Geographic Channel’s reconstructed glimpse into the turbulence roiling the city during the riots. We shuttle from images of the California National Guard on standby duty to moments of quiet calm at the First AME Church, where African-American city council member Rita Walters tells crowds, “Tonight we must tell our children one more time: Stay cool, be calm…that for African-American children and adults, freedom is not yet a reality in the United States.” The film premieres on Sunday, April 30, on National Geographic.
  3. The Lost Tapes: LA Riots
    As conflagrations spread across Los Angeles, first responders, dispatchers, and law enforcement agents scrambled to ensure the city did not fully descend into flames. Their voices are among those highlighted in this program from the Smithsonian Channel, which stitches together raw footage and homemade videos capturing the riots at the height of their intensity—some of it rarely-seen footage. “I can smell the fires,” one resident phones into a local radio station. “I’m really angry, and I’m really very scared. I just spent the last 10 years of my life in college. But it doesn’t really matter because even with a briefcase in my hand and suit on my back, I’m still just another nigger to the cops out there.” The episode is available online.
  4. Burn Motherf*cker, Burn!
    Showtime’s 99-minute documentary evaluates the events preceding the King beating, outlining the LAPD’s long history of systematic racism. The Sacha Jenkins film revisits the 1965 Watts riots, which were sparked by the arrest of African-American driver Marquette Frye. The six-day rebellion that followed in this largely African-American LA neighborhood killed 34 people and led to approximately 4,000 arrests. It was the costliest urban riot of its period, and it served as a precursor to the 1992 riots. The documentary also examines California’s Simi Valley, the predominantly white community to which the King trial was moved after fears of media saturation led to a venue change. No black citizens served on the Simi Valley jury that acquitted the officers. The full film is available on Showtime’s website.

Source: 

Revisiting the Rodney King Verdict 25 Years Later

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Smith's, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Revisiting the Rodney King Verdict 25 Years Later